Jepson Herbarium
The University and Jepson Herbaria
University of California, Berkeley
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Jepson Herbarium
The University and Jepson Herbaria
University of California, Berkeley
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A Series of Workshops on Botanical, Evolutionary, and Ecological Subjects for 2012
Workshops by DateClick here to download a PDF of the 2012 Workshop Brochure (3.8 MB)
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These introductory workshops are designed for participants with little or no botanical background and provide the foundation for the Weekend Workshops. Workshop fees are listed as Jepson Friend/General Public.
Introduction to Plant Morphology Would you like to learn more about plant morphology and expand your botanical vocabulary? If so, join us for this workshop where we will explore the morphology of flowers, fruits, and non-reproductive plant structures. Workshop participants will become familiar with the floral characters and terminology frequently used in the second edition of The Jepson Manual and other plant identification guides. This workshop is designed to start at an introductory level and is appropriate for the beginning botanist, nature lover, or avid gardener. Introduction to California Plant Families There are approximately 7,600 species of native or naturalized vascular plants in California: how is it possible to learn how to identify them all? Understanding plant family traits provides beginning botanists with a framework upon which to hang those thousands of species names. Fifty Families in the Field: Introduction to Keying Are you ready to jump into botanical detective work? With a working knowledge of common plant families, and comfort in using plant keys, identification can be an enjoyable challenge. This workshop introduces students to the flora of the San Francisco or Monterey Bay region and the techniques used to identify plants of California. Emphasis will be on learning to recognize characteristics of the area�s �top 20� plant families. We will practice keying plants in the field using the book Plants of the San Francisco Bay Region: Mendocino to Monterey (Linda H. Beidleman and Eugene N. Kozloff, 2003), which all workshop participants will need to purchase before the workshop. Changes in plant family names in the second edition of The Jepson Manual will be noted but not emphasized.
These workshops are designed for botanists, ecologists, conservationists, consultants, educators, amateurs, and agency employees. Unless specifically stated otherwise, the workshop content is technical and the level of instruction will assume that participants have a general understanding of the subject matter. Workshop fees are listed as Jepson Friend/General Public. Wetland Restoration Wetland ecosystems provide important ecosystem functions, from supporting endangered species to improving water quality. Although California has lost an enormous percentage of its wetlands, recently there has been an explosion of interest in wetland restoration, in particular around the San Francisco Bay. This short course will consider a range of issues related to basic wetland ecology (with a focus on plants, soils, and hydrology), as well as wetland restoration issues. We will discuss site assessment, the restoration of natural processes, wetland plant recruitment and plant diversity, and potential effects of climate change on local wetlands. March 9-11 • Workshop fee $360/$385 Death Valley’s Endemic Flora Flora of San Luis Obispo County San Luis Obispo County is one of California’s most ecologically diverse counties. Average rainfall varies from more than 50 inches in the coastal mountains to six inches or less on the Carrizo Plain. Habitats include coastal dunes and salt marshes, chaparral, coastal scrub, woodlands, forests, grasslands, and deserts. The County’s flora comprises over 1,800 species and includes numerous endemics. In early spring, wildflower displays often sprinkle the fields and woodlands with splashes of color. From our centrally-located campsite, we will make day trips to the eastern part of the county, the coast, and the San Luis Obispo area. Exact field destinations will depend on weather and accessibility. Field lectures will include recent history, major plant communities, environmental factors that determine community distribution, recognition of common taxa, and other aspects of the County’s diversity. Participants should be prepared to hike up to five miles each day over uneven terrain. Poaceae Prominent in plant communities throughout California, the grass family, Poaceae, is the state�s second most diverse plant family (after Asteraceae). A species-rich assemblage, its members include cool-season and warm-season species, annuals and perennials, natives and exotics, and widespread dominants and rare endemics. This workshop will provide a better understanding of this ubiquitous and diverse family. Participants will be instructed in detail on the vegetative and reproductive features of grasses. Aspects of anatomy, physiology, ecology, and ethnobotany will also be addressed. Most time will be spent learning to use the identification keys in the second edition of The Jepson Manual. Special attention will be given to difficult couplets and taxa. In addition, participants will learn how to determine major tribes and common genera by use of diagnostic characteristics. April 21-22 • Workshop fee $235/$260 Lilies of the Field
For decades, botanists have realized that the large family Liliaceae was a simple and convenient grouping that included plants from several lineages. The Jepson Manual (1993) followed this simple approach. The second edition of The Jepson Manual treats plants in natural groupings based on the best available evidence at the time of publication. The result is that plants previously treated in the Liliaceae are now in 15 families. May 5-6 • Workshop fee $235/$260 Seaweeds of Central California This workshop will focus on the seaweeds in the vicinity of the Kenneth Norris Rancho Marino Reserve in San Luis Obispo County. This UC reserve, founded in 2001, hosts a diversity of habitat types: Monterey pine/coastal live oak forest, California coastal prairie, northern coastal sage scrub, freshwater ponds, and three km (two miles) of coastline. It is located 80 miles north of the most significant biogeographical transition zone in coastal California, Point Conception. May 10-13 • Workshop fee $460/$485 Dudleya Plants in this charismatic group of succulents grow on coastal bluffs and mesas as well as inland ridge tops and canyon slopes. Of the 42 taxa in California, 27 have CNPS’s California Rare Plant Rank of 1B. With this many rare taxa in a widespread and sometimes confusing genus, tips on keying them may come in handy for consultants and land managers. The late, great Dudleya taxonomist Reid Moran once joked, “Having long been concerned with Dudleya, I find these difficulties a personal embarrassment and have almost come to feel that Dudleya must be my fault.” We won’t hold Reid responsible, but will try to sort out the changes in the second edition vs. the the 1993 edition of The Jepson Manual and try to take a fresh look at some species. We will utilize live plants from the largest living collection of Dudleya, as well as herbarium specimens. Relatively new genomic work will also be presented briefly. After looking at taxa that key easily, there will be a concentration on difficult groups. May 25-26 • Workshop fee $235/$260 Bees and Pollination Ecology of Spring Wildflowers
During this workshop we will examine selected aspects of the pollination ecology of the Hastings Reserve’s spring wildflowers. Field exercises will be used to demonstrate how and when flowers make their pollen and nectar rewards available to pollinators and how pollinators use their adaptations to extract floral resources. Various bee groups will be examined under magnification to observe relevant morphological adaptations. Participants will be instructed on the wide variety of methods that are used to study pollination relationships. Talks will be presented on the topics of pollination syndromes in plants, bee diversity, global pollinator decline, and encouraging pollinators in your backyard environment. June 1-3 • Workshop fee $360/$385 Biogeography and Endemic Plant Communities of the Big Bear-Holcomb Valley Area
The Big Bear Valley and its environs are one of California’s hotspots of endemism. With 16 narrow endemics and more than a dozen other near-endemic taxa, the pebble plains, vernal meadows, and limestone ridges of Big Bear and adjacent Holcomb Valleys comprise an unrivaled diversity of unique relict-alpine plant species. While exploring this area, we will see more than a dozen native bunchgrasses, from the delicate Bouteloua gracilis to the endangered Bear Valley bluegrass, Poa atropurpurea, and super-endemics such as San Bernardino round-pod, Physaria kingii subsp. bernardina, with only two known tiny occurrences, and the slender-petalled mustard, Thelypodium stenopetalum, which is also the food plant for an endemic butterfly! We also will see a bewildering array of minute monkeyflower species, ranging from the relatively robust endemic, Mimulus purpureus, at nearly 10 mm, to the tiniest monkeyflower in the world, M. exiguus (our trip leader coined its common name, the “eye-strain” monkeyflower), a near-endemic with corollas to 2 mm long. We will explore the area through a combination of car trips and short hikes up to three miles. June 7-10 • Workshop fee $475/$500 Carex It is nice to know your grasses and rushes, but you must master sedges to understand California’s meadows, many of which are dominated by the genus Carex. Come to Sonoma County and sample its rich spectrum of Carex diversity. With ample fresh material, we will learn the groups of Carex, using existing keys and some new materials. We will study the plants in the field, with dissecting scopes in the lab, and encourage students to bring fresh or pressed sedges from other parts of the state for examination. Thanks to the Sonoma Land Trust, we'll have the special opportunity to visit Pitkin Marsh during this workshop. June 27-30 • Workshop fee $460/$485 Juncaceae The Rush Family, Juncaceae, is a world-wide group with remarkable diversity in California. This workshop will focus on our California representatives of Juncus and Luzula, including more than a dozen endemics. With ample fresh material we will learn how to recognize the parts of a rush, distinguish rushes from similar grass-like plants, and use new identification keys to the California species in the second edition of The Jepson Manual. A number of species not listed in the Flora of North America North of Mexico will be covered, including some exotics that masquerade as natives and are unintentionally used in “native” wetland restoration. Bring your boots and hand lens; study will include visits to soggy field site to work with wet and wild populations, including a visit to Pitkin Marsh (thanks to the Sonoma Land Trust). June 30-July 2 • Workshop fee $235/$260 Potentilla, Past and Present (Rosaceae: tribe Potentilleae) If you want the inside scoop behind the extensive changes to Potentilla (cinquefoils) in the second edition of The Jepson Manual, and how to deal with “species” in a genus notorious for complex hybridization and asexual forms of reproduction, this is the workshop for you. Find out why fruticosa, glandulosa, and palustris have been evicted from Potentilla, why glandulosa has been fragmented into multiple species of Drymocallis, and how to tell them apart. Learn about new species of Potentilla in California and how to cope with plants that give only lip service to any rigid species definition. The workshop will also cover Ivesia, Horkeliella, and Horkelia, all restricted to western North America, leading to discussions on island biogeography in a continental setting and the pros and cons of paraphyly. Many of the species covered are rare, threatened, endangered, or presumed extinct, while others may merit conservation attention once we know more about them. We will be working with fresh plant material and herbarium specimens in the classroom; there will be no field trip component to this workshop. July 14-15 • Workshop fee $235/$260 Tarweeds The East Bay summer flora offers an opportunity to study fascinating native plants that escape the notice of all but the most avid botanists. At a time when most plants have dried and withered in California's valleys and foothills, some remarkable natives that have evolved solutions to surviving our summer drought are at peak flowering in those settings. In this workshop, we will focus on one such group, the tarweeds (subtribe Madiinae in Compositae/Asteraceae), which include much diversity in the East Bay, including rare and endemic taxa. We will spend all day Saturday and Sunday in the classroom, where we will review Compositae morphology (including characters most relevant to tarweeds) and have an opportunity to examine a wide diversity of taxa of Madiinae. A mixture of lecture and lab activities will stress identification, key characters of genera and rare taxa, and tarweed evolution. We hope to have fresh material of most, if not all, spring-flowering and summer-flowering Bay Area tarweed species (including several from the western, northern, and southern limits, in addition to the East Bay) in the workshop, from cultivated and field-collected plants, in addition to much pressed, dry material. This could prove to be the largest living collection of northern California tarweeds ever assembled in one room! Come learn the tarweeds in comfort, without suffering the harsh field conditions they endure! Information will be provided on where to find summer tarweeds in the East Bay for those who wish to visit nearby field sites on their own after the workshop. August 18-19 • Workshop fee $235/$260 Late-season Flora of the White Mountains The White Mountains are located at the southwest corner of the Great Basin floristic region, and their geologic and habitat diversity, high relief (over 10,000 feet from bottom to top), and proximity to the Sierra Nevada and Mojave Desert all contribute to an unusually rich and well-documented flora. During the customary “wildflower” seasons, the late-season flora is green or dormant and easily overlooked. In the White Mountains, this flora is characterized at all elevations by a late-blooming diversity of wetland species at isolated springs and riparian sites, and of woody Asteraceae (such as Artemisia, Brickellia, and Ericameria) and other species in upland areas. Depending on summer rains, we may also be treated to a suite of low-elevation monsoon annuals otherwise rarely seen in this region. September 13-16 • Workshop fee $495/$520 Fall Spectacular in the Siskiyous Evolution and Diversity of Mushrooms The mild to cool, wet winters and the variety of habitats found in California make it one of the best places in North America to find both an abundance and a high diversity of fungi. This workshop will provide an introduction to the biology and identification of California’s mushrooms. Through a combination of lectures and discussions, workshop participants will learn about the evolutionary history of fungi and the ecological role of fungi in nature. Most of the time will be spent with fresh mushrooms in the lab, where participants will have hands-on opportunities for learning how to identify mushrooms. A field trip to Pt. Reyes National Seashore will be a highlight of the weekend. December 8-9 • Workshop fee $235/$260 Bruce G. Baldwin is Curator of the Jepson Herbarium and professor in the Department of Integrative Biology at UC Berkeley, where he teaches Vascular Plant Systematics and the botany section of General Biology. Bruce received his Ph.D. in Botany at UC Davis in 1989. His research emphasizes systematics (including the use of biosystematic, molecular, and phylogenetic methods) of Californian vascular-plant groups, especially our native Compositae. He is Convening Editor of the Jepson Flora Project, which produced The Jepson Desert Manual (2002) and The Jepson Manual: Vascular Plants of California, Second Edition (2012). Heath Bartosh is acting chair of the Rare Plant Committee of East Bay CNPS and is on the State Rare Plant Program Committee. He ensures these programs continue to develop current, accurate information on the distribution, ecology, and conservation status of California’s rare and endangered plants. He helps to promote the use of this information to influence plant conservation. He is Principal and Senior Botanist at Nomad Ecology located in Martinez, California. Linda Beidleman has an M.S. in Biology from Rice University. She is co-author of Plants of the San Francisco Bay Region and Plants of Rocky Mountain National Park. She has worked with the California Native Plant Society, especially as co-supervisor for the CNPS East Bay plant nursery. Linda teaches short flora and ornithology courses for the Rocky Mountain National Park and the Aspen Center for Environmental Studies. Richard Beidleman has a Ph.D. in Biology (Ecology) from the University of Colorado and has taught at the University of Colorado, Colorado State University, and Colorado College (now Professor Emeritus). He is a Research Associate at the University and Jepson Herbaria and during the summer he teaches short ecology, ornithology, and flora courses in Colorado. He is co-author of Plants of Rocky Mountain National Park, and his most recent book is California's Frontier Naturalists (University of California Press). John Callaway is a wetland ecologist and professor in the Department of Environmental Sciences at the University of San Francisco. He received his Ph.D. from Louisiana State University and his B.A. from UC Berkeley. John’s research focuses on both plant and soil ecology of natural and restored wetlands. His recent work has evaluated carbon sequestration in San Francisco Bay wetlands, as well as potential impacts of climate change on wetlands in the Bay. Travis Columbus is a Research Scientist at Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden and Professor of Botany at the Claremont Graduate University. He has a Ph.D. from UC Berkeley, where he worked on Bouteloua and related taxa. His current research focuses on the evolution and classification of the grass subfamily Chloridoideae. Max Creasy recently retired from the U. S. Forest Service, where he was the Province vegetation ecologist for the four National Forests of northwest California. During his career, he worked extensively on vegetation community classification and mapping programs. His current interests include restoration ecology of the Klamath Mountains and revisiting botanical wonders of the region. Barbara Ertter, Curator of Western North American Flora at the University and Jepson Herbaria, is primary author of Potentilla and related genera for Flora of North America North of Mexico and The Jepson Manual. She has described several new species in Potentilla, Ivesia, Horkelia, and other genera, and has made numerous collections from throughout western North America. She is also author of "Annotated Checklist of the East Bay Flora" and co-author (with Mary Bowerman) on the second edition of The Flowering Plants and Ferns of Mount Diablo California. Other areas of interest include native Rosa, Juncus, biogeography, botanical history, and comparisons between the flora of western North America and the Middle East/central Asia. After serving as administrative curator at the University and Jepson Herbaria for twenty years, she now spends most of the year in Idaho. Gordon Frankie is Professor of Insect Biology in the College of Natural Resources at UC Berkeley. He received his Ph.D. in Entomology from UC Berkeley (1968). His research interests are in plant reproductive biology, pollination ecology, and solitary-bee biology. His field research is split equally between California and the seasonally dry tropical forests of Costa Rica. He teaches several lecture and field courses in applied conservation biology at UC Berkeley and in Costa Rica. Matt Guilliams is a fourth-year Ph.D. candidate in the Baldwin Lab at UC Berkeley. He is interested in the diversification of the California flora and, in particular, studies the genus Plagiobothrys (Boraginaceae) to examine patterns of evolution in our exceptionally biodiverse and environmentally heterogenous state. He uses a combination of molecular and morphological data in his analyses and is particularly interested in the incorporation of fossil data into phylogenetic inference. Matt is a native Californian, born in Newport Beach. David Keil received his B.S. (1968) and M.S. (1970) from Arizona State University and Ph.D. (1973) from The Ohio State University. Dave is a (partially retired) professor of biology at California State Polytechnic University, San Luis Obispo, where he also serves as Director and Curator of Vascular Plants for the Robert F. Hoover Herbarium. He has authored scientific papers, written textbooks and study guides, contributed to the Flora of North America North of Mexico Asteraceae treatment, and has been a major participant in both editions of The Jepson Manual. His research interests include Asteraceae systematics, the flora of San Luis Obispo County, and floristics of California and other regions of western North America. Dean Kelch is a plant systematist in the Botany Laboratory at the California Department of Food and Agriculture and an Assistant Researcher with the Jepson Herbarium. He received his Ph.D. in botany from UC Davis, studying under the late tropical botanist, Grady Webster. His research focuses on the evolutionary relationships of seed plants, and he specializes in the systematics of conifers, particularly Podocarpaceae, and the North American thistles (Cirsium spp.). He currently is working on a flora of the Carquinez Strait region of California. Marla Knight has been a botanist on the Klamath National Forest for 30 years and, during that time, has become very familiar with the local flora. She received a B.S. in Renewable Natural Resources from UC Davis in 1977. Tim Krantz is a professor at the University of Redlands in Southern California and is an alumnus of the geography department of UC Berkeley, where he completed his dissertation on the flora and phytogeography of the San Bernadino Mountains. Anna Larsen is a Research Associate with the University and Jepson Herbaria and has a Ph.D. in Integrative Biology from UC Berkeley. Her research interests include ethnobotany and floristics in California and the Pacific Islands. Anna has taught lecture and lab courses in California Plant Life, Medical Ethnobotany, General Biology, and the Biology and Geomorphology of Tropical Islands. Stephen McCabe is the Director of Development and Research, and Curator of Succulents at UC Santa Cruz Arboretum. He has been working on Dudleya since 1983. His Dudleya fieldwork has taken him to Oregon, Baja California, Guadalupe Island, all of California's Channel Islands, and from the California coast to the Sierra Nevada. He has assembled a large collection of field-collected specimens, which grow together in conditions similar to a common garden at the UCSC Arboretum. Kathy Ann Miller has loved seaweeds since her first phycology class in 1976. She was trained at UC Berkeley, receiving her B.A. and Ph.D. degrees in Botany. She has extensive intertidal and subtidal field experience and is particularly devoted to the seaweed flora of California. She works as a curator of seaweeds with Paul C. Silva at the University Herbarium at UC Berkeley. Jim Morefield began studying botany as a student at Deep Springs College, spent many field seasons exploring and revising the flora of the adjacent White Mountains in the 1980s, and still conducts regular field work and workshops in the area. After finishing a degree in Botany and Geology in Flagstaff, Arizona, he completed a Ph.D. at Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden, where he studied Stylocline and related genera of composites. He contributed treatments toThe Jepson Manual and Flora of North America North of Mexico for these genera plus Chaenactis. Currently, Jim works as the botanist for the Nevada Natural Heritage Program. Matt Ritter received his B.S. (1996) from UC Santa Barbara and Ph.D. (2002) from UC San Diego. He is an associate professor of biology at California State Polytechnic University, San Luis Obispo, where he teaches courses in botany, plant diversity, and ecology. He is the author of A Californian’s Guide to the Trees among Us (Heyday, 2011) and is a contributor to botanical references including the second edition of The Jepson Manual and the Flora of North America Project. He is corresponding editor for Madroño, the journal of the California Botanical Society, and Director of the Plant Conservatory at Cal Poly. His research interests include cultivated trees and trees that escape cultivation. John L. Strother is in charge of Compositae (Asteraceae) in the University Herbarium (and curates the comps in JEPS as well). He also participates in matters concerning curation of other seed-plant collections and in public-service plant identifications for campus, municipal, state, and federal agencies, as well as for private and public institutions and universities. Robbin Thorp is Professor Emeritus, Department of Entomology, UC Davis. He received a B.S. (1955) and an M.S. (1957) in Zoology from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and his Ph.D. (1964) in Entomology from UC Berkeley. During his tenure on the faculty at UC Davis, he taught courses in entomology, natural history of insects, insect classification, California insect diversity, and pollination ecology until retirement in 1994. His continued research interests include ecology, systematics, biodiversity, conservation, and biology of bees. Else Vellinga is a mycologist who studies the diversity of parasol mushrooms worldwide. She was trained at the state herbarium in the Netherlands and has been living and mushrooming in California for the last 14 years. She is currently an adjunct associate professor at San Francisco State University. Her work has focused on describing the mushroom flora of California, and she has discovered over 20 new mushroom species for the state so far. Stewart Winchester has a background in environmental studies and sociology, and has taught horticulture at Merritt and Diablo Valley Colleges for more than 20 years. He is employed as an arborist and horticultural consultant for landscape architects, selecting species, reviewing plans, and conducting workshops. He has run the field program at Diablo Valley College since 1983, visiting most of California and the West with students, who are his main inspiration. Dana York received his M.S. (1999) from California State University, Fresno, in biology and botany, and his B.S. (1984) in forest management from Humboldt State University. He has worked on floristic and special-status species surveys throughout California and Oregon on both public and private lands. He has discovered new plants in the Oregon Cascade and Sierra Nevada ranges and Death Valley National Park. He was Death Valley's botanist for nearly five years. He currently works in Eureka, California, for Caltrans as an Environmental Unit Supervisor. He lives in Arcata with his wife, Eva, and their two children. Elizabeth H. Zacharias is a Research Associate with the University and Jepson Herbaria. She has a Ph.D. from UC Berkeley, where she studied phylogenetic relationships and character evolution across Atriplex and related taxa in tribe Atripliceae (Chenopodiaceae). Her current research focuses on the evolution and classification of the New World Atriplex. Peter Zika received his undergraduate degree in botany at the University of Vermont in 1983. His early botanical interest was the circumboreal sedges of New England, but his interests broadened to include the conservation of the flora of the entire region. He has worked as a rare plant botanist in Vermont, New York, and Oregon for the Nature Conservancy's Natural Heritage Programs. Peter helped found the Washington and Oregon Flora Checklist projects and is a plant taxonomist at the Burke Museum's University of Washington Herbarium, as well as author of several genera for The Jepson Manual: Vascular Plants of California, Second Edition.
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